The morning newsletter of the Ohio Capital Journal
Reporting for the People
Make a tax-deductible donation supporting our work.
By David DeWitt | Editor in Chief
Good morning Ohio!
Last year, Ohio Republican lawmakers and Gov. DeWine nixed Ohio’s four-day absentee ballot grace period over fears of chaos and confusion if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them. Instead, a 5-4 court ruled Monday the grace periods are perfectly valid.
Ohio nixed absentee ballot grace period before US Supreme Court ruling, but court went the other way
An election worker processes mail-in ballots. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
By Nick Evans
The U.S. Supreme Court’s vindication of a state’s role in setting election deadlines will protect grace periods around the country. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 14 states and four territories currently allow absentee ballots to arrive after Election Day.
Before the change by Ohio Republican lawmakers, the state used to allow absentee ballots post-marked by Election Day the four-day grace period to arrive.
By Susan Tebben
Ohio women who lost their wanted pregnancies are urging lawmakers to support abortion care, four years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nationwide abortion rights.
By Marty Schladen
Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno and Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren have proposed a fix to Social Security. Observers praised it, but said more needs to be done.
COMMENTARY
Photo provided by Steve David.
By Steve David
In our chaotic information environment, the need for clarity from official sources is why the Ohio Secretary of State's Office’s decision to post information that could easily mislead voters about what identification is needed to cast their ballots is so concerning.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris
A spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, affecting grantees in more than two dozen states.
By Nada Hassanein
The Trump administration announced new narrowed guidelines for the Violence Against Women Act in December, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been increasingly scrutinizing domestic violence survivors’ applications for legal status.
By Amanda Watford
The Federal Communications Commission has approved new rules designed to improve the reliability of Next Generation 911 systems as states continue replacing decades-old emergency call infrastructure with internet-based networks.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Chase Woodruff, Colorado Newsline
The Republican National Committee and two Colorado Republican elected officials are suing the Colorado Secretary of State, alleging that a policy allowing some U.S. citizens overseas to register and vote in Colorado elections violates the state constitution.
NATIONAL NEWS
By Jonathan Shorman
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, a blow to the Trump administration and some Republican states that had urged the justices to require all ballots to arrive by the close of polls.
By Jonathan Shorman
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that law enforcement searches for the location history of cellphones near crime scenes are covered by the Fourth Amendment, requiring warrants to obtain the data.
By Ashley Murray
The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump both a win and a loss Monday in allowing his firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, but ruling that he cannot remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.
By Shauneen Miranda
A bipartisan bill to set national standards for college athletes’ compensation has cleared a major legislative hurdle but still faces roadblocks, including opposition from the largest college sports conferences, to becoming law.
By Ashley Murray
Activists rallied, danced and marched in the nation’s capital Saturday as they laid out their vision for the future of the United States beyond this year’s semiquincentennial.
By Amelia Twyman
Members of the New Democrat Coalition have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide fresh details about the nation’s screwworm outbreak and demanded that the Trump administration allocate more resources to containing the spread.
By Jacob Fischler
John Bolton, a national security adviser to President Donald Trump in his first term, pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge of mishandling classified information, the Department of Justice said in a news release Friday.
CATCHING OUR EYE
Ohio poll. USA Today reports, “Acton narrowly leads Ramaswamy in new Ohio governor poll.”
Democrat Amy Acton holds a narrow lead over Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, 47% to 44%, a gap that is within the poll's margin of error.
Acton leads among voters under 50 and independents, while Ramaswamy leads with voters 50 and older.
Affordability and the cost of living are the top issues for voters aged 50 and older.250. Cleveland.com’s Brent Larkin writes, “Trump’s grotesque distortions of what would otherwise be a gala 250th.”
The United States at 250 has little in common with the nation that celebrated its 200th birthday in 1976. Back then, Americans had reason to believe their government worked exactly as the Founders intended, that the Congress and Supreme Court would not tolerate the crimes of the Watergate era, forcing from office a president whose wrongdoings now seem like third-degree misdemeanors when compared to what’s happening today.
Nevertheless, in the election of 2024, an astonishing 77,302,580 Americans, according to official results, voted to return to the presidency a man who, not long before that, was found by two juries of his peers to have committed 34 felonies related to his business and a year before that, ordered to pay $88 million to a woman a civil jury found he sexually abused in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. About two dozen women have credibly accused Trump of sexual abuse, a habit he boasted about on at least one occasion.
In return for all those votes, Trump has returned the favor by assembling and presiding over a government that is today one of the most reviled on the planet, one where everything he touches, from his botched war with Iran to his lies about how he has disfigured our precious national landmarks, becomes a national embarrassment.Free food. The Dayton Daily News’ Ben Dannemiller reports, “Federal court: Dayton ordinance prohibiting giving away food downtown unconstitutional.”
A federal judge sided with a Dayton nonprofit that sued the city after one of its members was arrested in 2024 for distributing food to homeless people downtown.
Southern District of Ohio Judge Thomas Rose ruled Tuesday, June 24, that a city ordinance requiring a permit to distribute food, clothing, or toiletries in public in downtown Dayton is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
Thanks for reading The Eye-Opener. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.